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 that he thought desirable for himself or for the community apart from any question of the energy and efficiency with which the community did its work. It has been shown above that the war revealed a quite astonishing capacity for production on the part of this country when the working power of the community was really set to work as hard, or nearly as hard, as it could. Under these circumstances we had apparently performed economic miracles, and the very dangerous delusion was rife during the after-war period which taught that economic miracles could be continued without the tremendous effort and whole-hearted co-operation which had marked our productive achievements during the war. If the land was to be made fit for heroes to live in, it could only be made by a continuance of the hard work and goodwill which had made it victorious during the war. The assumption that it could be done at the expense of some fund already in existence and that the rock only had to be struck hard enough in order to produce a stream of prosperity led the working classes of this country along a path which ended in grievous disillusionment.

It was shown only too clearly that the Government's purse very soon reaches bottom unless it is filled by a stream of goods and